When we're chopping it up in the Discord, I'm like, when everybody says put the initials, I'm like, Fody. It's so dumb. I think I'd call it Fody, too. Look at the issues that they've had with that. If that would have went to operators first, it would have been fixed way faster than what it has. Because we would have said, hey, this is getting hung up here. Would you put tape in the toilet bowl? Yeah, we ended up fixing our toilet bowl shot. The ball would spin a lot, and then on every float I've played, it ends up kind of doing like a half moon back and forth along the front edge. and then as long as it has that momentum like it won't go into the drain hole so you just kind of sit around and wait for it to happen or you got to nudge it into the hole and depending on how tight the tilt is you know you might be risking dangers or whatever and i tried everything man i was cutting standoffs and moving them up and down adding spacers and shims and sort of all all kinds of bags of tricks and then roads and i were there and we ended up getting a piece of tape like clear packing tape and folded it into a little triangle and stuck it on and now what's great is when the ball goes up the shot spins around whips around go folds right over the tape right because it's flexible ball moves just fine but then when it starts to slow down that tape that spine is up and it's just enough to knock the ball off of its you know meandering path where you're not getting any more spins anyway but it sends it towards the drain hole so it's like a night and day difference and it's basically a free fix okay but take that mech take what's called a mech we're going to call it a mech sure how many games have the toilet bowl you have taxi you have essentially diner you have a transporter you have uh white water can't forget white water creature from the black lagoon you have creature none of those games have that problem why does this you know i think that's where the operators come in is like hey this is causing a problem it's you know yeah you might have a game that lasts 30 seconds longer because of the toilet bowl shot but like at this at the end of the day it's like dude it's only 30 seconds longer because the ball was stuck in yeah it's not fun and engaging 30 seconds longer gameplay but you have the death star shot you know the reject yeah they have a fix for it but it's like you fix yours before it was even the fix was even released for that yeah because it's like because as an operator as you know it's like And I'm going to pull this thing apart and see if there's not something I can do beforehand, you know, because I'm not going to wait around for the manufacturer. Like, because honestly, here's my thing. And here's what I would like to see from manufacturers is when I reach out to tech support. It's not that I haven't gotten the stuff I need from every manufacturer eventually. But sometimes I wish I had my own line as an operator because I wish I could be like, I understand. That Stern or whoever, you know, CGC or whatever, you know, or Spooky or Barrels. I've had to deal, get parts and do tech support with all these companies. And I understand they have to do their due diligence, right? Because they're selling these games to home collectors. And these home collectors may have not ever fixed a game in their life before. But I want, when I contact a manufacturer, I'm like, dude, can we just fast track me past the bullshit part of like. But you're just, you're just in the queue. Yeah. That's all you are. Like I said, it doesn't matter. You're just another number. And I don't want to say that home collectors aren't important. They paid a lot of money for their game and whatever. They're the majority of the market, and the game should work. And when they reach out, they should have someone get back to them and help guide them through the process to get their game working again. What I am saying, though, it's way different when you're an operator and your new game is turned off at your location. because one, they're not easy to move, and two, it looks bad, and that game that you bought to be earning money is just off and not earning money. So I personally do feel like every manufacturer should take notice and give operators priority with tech support and parts support and all that kind of stuff ahead of Gen Pop, because ultimately at the end of the day, if you have to wait a few days to get a response or to get whatever from another company for a game at your house, I get that that sucks but like dude it is bad every day you have a brand new game that people are coming to you to play and that game it looks bad it's so bad and all the well all the players think is that you're just a shit head operator like you don't care and some operators are like that don't get me wrong but what we're seeing now in the modern day is like we're having a lot of operators like you or myself the only reason we're doing pinball is because we love it yeah that's literally the only reason we could be doing anything else and making more money we're doing it because we love pinball we want the pinball to play really good and you know i want my players to have a good experience and when i want to when we bring a game in i want to be like hell yeah you you know that when that game is on the floor at wedge or that game is on the floor at flip a coin that you're going to be able to go in that game's going to be running and it's going to play good how often do you have games that are turned off more than one day basically never same like if i have to go a day i'm like shit yeah what do i will drive myself crazy trying to fix that thing i mean that's kind of what that's what ends up happening right is like i'm gonna move heaven and earth to try to do whatever i can yeah and get macgyver on some stuff to make things work again like i'm not above trying to re-engineer parts on my own as an operator i think a lot of operators are that way that's always been the way you have to do it sometimes you have to do it sometimes yeah like being a good operator being a good tech is making something work in the field it's like being a medic in a war zone well this isn't perfect hospital conditions with all you know with all the support and all the perfect tools it's like now this is triage let's get out there and make this shit work with what we got i have hacked some shit together of course you know but i fixed it the right way later on even when i got the part that i needed absolutely but i have hacked some shit yeah that's okay i think it's okay i think it's better that the game plays and that the customers have no idea well it got the game playing for them yeah no i i i think fast tracking operators you know would be big for for that but i'm not saying like go go hire somebody just for operators no but just take care of us like you used to you know we don't need the change i don't know where the change happened because it's it was just briefly that even operators were like hey you know you guys are the thing and now like you don't see that anymore no and it's weird because it's like i always feel uh again i'm biased so i don't know how it comes across but when I'm reaching out to the companies, but I'm like, hey, man, like when you're sending me stuff or you're asking me, like, I'm not just like, duh, what's going on? You know, like, like I've already been through this. Yeah, I've already been through it. Like, I got it. You can be like, I have the tools. I have the know-how. If you're like, hey, have you tested this? Have you swapped this with that? Has it changed something? And we can go back and forth. So I feel like that would be easier to deal with. The issue I had on Pulp Fiction recently with the ball trough and then ball not kicking out like i reached out to cgc and they were just like well have you tried this and i'm like you had like 10 steps ago like yeah they're like well that's the recommended fix for this i was like yeah but it's that's not working like i eventually just like started messing with it and like we talked about it and i took your notes that you had yep i ended up doing what you said eliminating connectors yeah i haven't had a problem you know knock on wood for quite a few days see that's the thing is like when we operators we share knowledge with each other or lots of us you know and uh i wish we were more of the process you know what i mean i think what you're echoing and what roads i know echoes my business partner is like he's like man i buy a lot of fucking games every year and like sometimes when i have to reach out to a company doesn't feel like Like I get treated with the respect necessarily of someone that just bought $100,000 worth of games that year from a company. You know what I mean? So I get that, man. I don't know. This is my last question on the business side of it. But do you think pinball, and I talk about it on the show a lot, but do you think pinball can ever become truly and highly profitable again to run on location? and I'm not talking about just as a side hustle or as a gimmick to get people in the door to buy other stuff will it ever get to the point where like games could get put on location and this is what I mean you can buy a game for whatever it costs if it's seven eight ten twelve grand whatever the games cost is there ever a point where and I would say 18 months or less you pay that game off and then the next two or three years you can make money on it and then still sell it for some residual value like they used to do is there any do you see that in the future or do you not see that in the future oh man this hurts uh honestly no yeah i think until like it just we're both very passionate about the hobby yeah you know take the take location side out of it we're very passionate people about the hobby i think what you have is games are too much now. Not too much in the sense that they cost too much, but they're just over-designed. And maybe I don't want to use over-design, but there's codes or rules are too deep. I think rule sets have heard a lot of what is going on today because you have to make a game that plays for a 30-minute game of Godzilla or an hour-long game of Godzilla for the person buying it to feel accomplished or where the value of the game is yeah yeah yeah where back in the day i mean i know you have it i could talk inflation and everything about buying games because the cost or whatever you know but the simplicity of games like i'm just i keep using games example i'm looking at right now uh one of the games that i've been recently playing a lot is attack from mars yep is that game deep no not really yeah but why is it still a top game why is it still a game that people when we talk about going out and to play why is that still one of those games because it's easy it's fun it's simple you know it's not you don't have to be a computer programmer to play you just play the fucking thing where i think where games the newer games come out no matter what manufacturer it is i mean look at the depth of dune that thing's that thing's crazy harry potter's pretty deep for the most part it's harry potter seems deep to me as a person that's only played it about 20 times like i don't think i would see there's a lot there content in that game dnd is a whole different thing that's a whole different beast i don't play a lot of new games so what what sterns are like crazy deep jaws i haven't played jaws for a while yeah jaws pretty much jaws is considered deep i mean all the l-wing games are going to be deep You have to play so much or stack this, this, this, this, this, and this to do anything with points. And until you do all that, you're not going to do anything. So, I mean. Do you think that there's just, like, not fun? There's not enough fun early on in games? Like, regardless of skill level? Yeah, yeah, 100%. Like, you have to get through the game to start seeing the cool stuff. Where, again, we're going to use Attack from Mars. Yep. if you just keep uh hitting the saucer like what is the first one four hits and you explode it that's fucking cool oh do you see that i mean you know what i mean or you're gonna hit the left side and you're gonna get those locks you know and you're gonna start that multi-ball or you'll get the martians will jiggle because that's you know that can be in a random award or it can be just hitting the targets around the play field that you're not even thinking about oh yeah i agree I don't care how many times you play it. You're still there and you're like, hell yeah. Same thing with Made of Madness. Look at the castle. I mean, there's a reason those two games are so sought after still today. They're not incredibly deep, but you could sit and play them. I've been playing those games for 20 years and I'm not sick of them. No. I think that's a lot of it. I think that's what's hurting pinball currently is it's too much. We need to go back to simple times. I mean, Pulp Fiction, that game's amazing. And it's not incredibly deep. It's simple. It does well on location. I think, I don't know how it's rated overall, but it does super well on location. I don't know any operators, operator friends that have Pulp Fiction that says it doesn't do good. I think it's because it's simple. Well, and it's got a popular movie license, and it's handled well, and the sound's good, and the music's good, all that kind of stuff. But I think if we went back to a more simpler time, when I would say golden age, late 70s to mid 90s, would you say is golden age pinball? I mean, arcades were popping back then. I agree. Until we get back to that era, I don't think we're going to ever see that again. I think we're pushing longer playing games into people's basements. Location pinball is going to hurt because of that. You know, I don't want to go sit at a bar and play an hour long game with anything. I don't care what it is I don't want to play that I you know that takes away from everything else that I'm doing and do you think that there's anything that can be done with with that as far as like I feel exactly the same way like you can you will not no way am I playing multiplayer modern games with people no way am I doing that absolutely not it doesn't mean that I I don't like some of them or I can't get into it although it there is still a hard limit like when I say to me a long playing game is 10 to 20 minutes that feels long to me if i have a game that i play even solo and i break a 20 or 30 minute game on it one time i don't want to play it no more ever i will yeah like ever play it more i did that test on godzilla a few weeks ago and i had people coming up to me like they're like dude you don't you don't ever play godzilla what are you doing i'm like i'm doing a test leave me alone i hit like a 15 minute game i haven't played that game since Like I played it because I had to fix something, but that was it. Like I don't want to play it. It was too much. It was too long. I think we need to get back to simple simplicity of games. And you think that would help the feasibility of pinball location? You think it would make more people interested in the games? Yeah, I think these new games are too hard for the common casual player. Interesting. I think you would see more growth. I mean licensing too. Like everybody's about licensing and themes and all this other stuff. What we want, you're never going to see again, but you release Taylor Swift or something like that. You're not going to bring new players in because of it. You're just going to have a few casuals pop in and see it. Harry Potter is a perfect example of that. It's not growing pinball. It hasn't done anything besides people see it once or twice, they play it, and then they never play again. Because they're doing it's doing the thing that it's supposed to do, which is people that haven't played pinball. Well, it's obviously doing the crossover where it's like people that grew up with Harry Potter and like pinball are very excited. So they play it a lot. Yes. Then there is the people that don't play pinball at all. But this theme is something they love. So they're like, oh, there's that thing I love. It a pinball machine I guess we go out and try it So that also good but it only so good if those players not only go up and play it but then come back and go oh let play it again oh maybe pinball kind of fun and that's what you're saying you don't think it does no i think when you go like you could go up to a casual player and after they got done playing harry potter and say what do you think they're like i have no idea what i was doing i'm just hitting the ball like that's that's where the disconnect is oh well i have to do this to do this okay i put that that together you don't just do those two things you have to do five things to do that you know what i think too is like i think that there's too much stacking in modern games oh it's too much there's too much overlap of stuff going on at the same time versus like older games used to for better for worse lock you out of progress towards shit barrels kind of does that too you know to a certain extent they'll lock you out of something i mean string does it too everybody's doing it yeah but we need i think it's we're just it's too much we need to get back to whitewater let's start a mode yeah let's hit this ramp hit this other ramp you're into a thing okay let's collect rafts and next thing you know and use inserts on the play field to show that you're progressing something right yeah but it's we have we have way too much stuff and it's because it's all i think a lot of it is afterthought oh shit, we should have added this to the code instead. We should, you know, when you're releasing codes that are half-baked, I mean, X-Men's a perfect example of that. You know, X-Men's an amazing shooter, but it was so half-baked that it's ridiculous. Do you think, though, that they could make games simpler and at the same time not alienate their home buyer base? No. So we're basically, we're just kind of stuck in this situation. I think you should, I think, like we said before, sell to the operators. Give them a grace period of, let's say, one or two months before. Get those games out there. But then you're going to have people like, oh, I played and played it. It's not that good. You know, it's just, it's the world we live in today. Yeah, yeah. You know, if you want to bring pinball back, just be passionate. Push it as hard as you can. You know, try to get, say, one to five players new a year into it. and hope for the best. I mean, that's how I feel like doing it too. It's the ugly truth. It's so grassroots, and it takes so much effort to convert one new player. It takes so much work. And not only is it that you need the games, you need them to be on location, you need them to be accessible, you want them to work, then it's also like you can have all the perfect setup, and you could have every game ever made in perfect condition, and you'll still have people that come in, and i don't even know what the conversion rate is like way less than one percent of people that play a pinball machine walk away and go oh that was fun i want to do that again and then come back next week or or whatever or seek out pinball like it is a very small conversion rate compared to everything else yep you're not much of a tournament player like i love tournaments i love the competitive aspect but i like that it's the face-to-face interaction type thing yeah with that also having people come in like a casual player you they come in for the first time and they play a game and they're like oh you know like i think we talked about this on the last podcast that we did and you see them and they kind of look like they're like i don't know if i want to play this and then they play it and they're like okay that was kind of cool so they'll play it again And I'm not saying growth is getting people to play tournaments, but casual growth is also amazing, too. You know, how many times do you see in your spot casual players that you see once they've like, you know, very, very green to the old pinball thing. But then you see them over and over again. I'm not saying like every week, but like maybe once a month and then or once every couple of months, then they start coming in a little bit more often. But they got hooked. How often do you see that? I mean, we see it. I always, you know, we get lots of new players in. I just think about it like, you know, Portland's a huge town and we have a ton of pinball everywhere, dude, and all types of pinball. Right. So, you know, I hear about this sometimes being discussed. They're like, oh, well, there's no pinball near me or the only pinball near me is two broken. There's like a CSI and then there's a certain avatar and they don't work and they haven't been cleaned or whatever. And those are the two games and they're 30 minute drive for me. And there's no other pinball. And then people go, well, yeah, you know, like pinball needs to be places for people to play it, for it to grow. And I was like, obviously I agree with that. But then I look at a place like Portland, I go, okay, we have 1300 games on location in the Portland metro area. There's 2.5 million people in the metro area. How many people do I think play pinball say once a month anywhere, you know, just like play pinball a regular player um i don't know less than 5 000 probably less than 3 000 probably less than 2 000 realistically you know okay well those aren't great numbers you know what i mean yeah so and the access isn't an issue but there's something going on man like because pinball used to be big and it's not big and it's it's having this somewhat resurgence but it's a i feel like it's hard not to look at it like it still feels tepid to me it still feels like when when niche hobby people hear that you like you play pinball like what do you do for your on your spare time you know i play pinball they're like you you fucking nerd yeah you know they're like motherfucker you were just at a cosplay thing like yeah totally you know what i mean when the niche hobby people think that what you do is stupid like that's not a good i don't know what do you what do you think how do you think we should like what do you think needs to happen or do you think we'll ever see it back or i don't know if well i don't think we'll ever see it to the popularity that it was in the late 70s for sure i'm on my optimistic days i go it could be as big as it was in the early 90s i think it could be that big again now on my pessimistic days i go not at this rate just like what you were saying where i'm like i don't know if the games i think the biggest growth market is location because even the home collectors, like one, the games are expensive. Even the guys that buy the games for their house, even if they have the money, they run out of space. So they either run out of money or they run out of space. And it's even harder to mint those people than it is because they, one, have to be a pinball player. And then, two, they have to have the disposable income to spend tens of thousands of dollars on these machines to put them in their house. So even though that's the majority of their market right now, the market overall is smaller in units, manufactured and sold than it was in the early 90s 30 years ago and the only way for that to grow bigger is for them to for locations to be growing and for operators to be buying more games because operators will always buy games to keep their lineups fresh right and and expand their routes if they're doing well and operators don't look at games like oh i don't like star wars or i don't like dungeons and dragons they look at and go fuck it we ball dude let's buy it i'll put it somewhere i don't care if i like stranger things or not it doesn't matter right but home collectors are like you didn't make the game the movie from the 80s that i wanted you made a different movie from the 80s that i wanted you know what i mean like yeah so i think that the growth potential is absolutely on location but we need to get games that will do well on location and i'm not sure that because i feel like the people driving the bus are the home buyers that i don't know if we're going to get that do you think things like harry potter and the rumored pokemon i think those are great i think those are great it'll change do you think it will get new players i hope so i just don't know if it'll make like a sea change you know what i mean like i think because we already have we already have titles like that we already have star wars is like that star wars is massive timeless it's a timeless yeah so it's like okay cool we're getting harry potter cool i think pokemon is going to be great for that and for like visibility but like you know are we pretending like star wars doesn't already exist you know what i mean like it's not that we haven't gotten big massive themes or licenses before and has it meaningfully increased the player base i don't know i mean we've we've had licenses throughout i mean look at you have a dolly parton or dolly yep you you we've had themes but we've had things mixed in with that you know up until recently but ultimately the game has to be fun like i think themes gameplay i think the Placeless themes are helpful to draw a player's first attention, just like you were saying with your Harry Potter. But it's like, that's great. But if the player doesn't walk away going, man, that was fun. I had fun doing this activity. I want to do this activity again. Then it's only to support the current people. You know, it's only to support us as already exist in the hobby. and we don't view things the same way that a casual person who doesn't play pinball walking up to a machine the first time use it like a casual person doesn't understand that they can play a two-player game a casual person doesn't understand what the button on top of the ape you know the lockdown bar does hell dude i don't even understand it sometimes right well that's what i'm saying is you're at the point where it's like we don't view that kind of stuff those pain points we don't view them as pain points because we're into the hobby so we're like oh duh you got to put the credits in you got to hit the button twice you know on dnd you know you hit it once and it does this you hit it you hit it and hold it down and it does that you know like that is lost on new players but it's like i just want to say like i hate to end any show on a negative bet so i want us to talk about just a couple of reasons why we're thankful for modern pinball as both players and operators. I'll start with mine. I am thankful that we're getting new games because it obviously creates excitement, but it also keeps the prices of the classics reasonable because they would become astronomically expensive to buy. We've already seen that. And I like that it creates just new buzz for the hobby because even us, you know, it's like as much as we love the old games, we're still like hey man barrels is coming out with a new game or stern or jjp or whoever it's like it gives us all something in the hobby to talk about and to go play like so i'm grateful for that i am grateful that i've been playing pinball for 20 years and you know there was a time when i first started playing that didn't seem like it was gonna make it so i'm grateful that's still around and that we still get new games and every once in a while i get a game i love so i'm thankful for that yeah i i agree 100 with all that um you know very thankful that it's still going even if we aren't always a fan of everything you know it's still it's still stuff coming out you know people are putting their blood sweat and tears into putting a new game out for us to criticize and enjoy you know yeah yeah i mean the fact that we're still going like when you talk to people you know being a location owner people are like wow they still make these like yeah man this shit's still going like we're still we are still going strong you know are we getting you know i did some research before we recorded about games like there's a point in time where we were getting like a game run was only like four months and then we'd get a new game four months and then that game was done like no more production and we'd get a new game and that was just one game you know multiple games per manufacturer you know how many different manufacturers were there but times change but we're still here we're still going and that's you know you you have to be thankful for that progression is always a good thing yeah there's interesting ideas being done in modern pinball there oh there's some cool s max yeah there's cool max and there's cool rule sets and some people really really like those things i personally don't like the runtime of these in general but yeah i mean it's i have plenty of friends that do i you know like alex the water boy he loves modern games yeah so but so everybody has different flavors yes that's why we have flavors you know look at like you were talking cool mechs look at that new mech that's on kong sweepable drop targets the first time it's ever been come on first featured mech that's my that's my absolute favorite but no i mean look at the the sandworm oh man yeah that mech is cool as hell if you put that back in the day i mean like look at let's go think adam's family thing like when that when the when the hand grabs the ball that's some wild shit you know it still is like you still see people like whole do you see that hand come out but then you have like the stuff like the sandworm dude that mechs wild yeah it's very impressive It's cool as hell. I mean, D&D, the dragon, when it spits the balls back at you, is it a very intricate mech? No, but it's cool as hell. Yeah, that's fucking cool. The premium is pretty fucking cool. No, it is. How it spits the balls at you. I know Jurassic Park, was it Data East that picked the ball up? Yeah, picked the ball up and ate it. I know you had that, but look at the new one. That shit, it's pretty fucking cool. No, the premium Jurassic Park where the T-Rex sees the ball is cool as hell. Just the technology we're seeing is, you know, you've got to be thankful for that alone. I want to thank you, AJ, for coming on another episode and filling in short notice Waterboy there as he is out sick. But for anyone listening, we want to encourage you, as always, the message of the show, no matter who my guest host is, is to go out and play some pinball on location, support your local operators, play some new games that they paid and put out there for you to play go seek it out and play pinball and play pinball with others introduce others in your life to pinball if you care about the game and you want to see it in the future it only exists because passionate people work at the companies making these games passionate people are operating games and opening up locations for you to go play at because these games are expensive so the best way to play as always is on location. So I want you to go out and do that. And until next time, good luck. Don't suck. That's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight. Losing my religion. Trying to keep up with you And I don't know if I can do it Oh no, I've said too much I haven't said enough I thought that I heard you laughing I thought that I heard you sing I think I thought I saw you try